Fibre Channel (FC) is a protocol for connecting storage devices in a fabric network. The FC standard identifies a protocol and a collection of physical interfaces for managing computer peripheral components. A purpose of this protocol is to efficiently manage large numbers of storage devices using serial interfaces operating over optical or electrical interfaces.
FC provides an efficient and dependable means for transferring data between workstations, mainframes, supercomputers, desktop computers, storage devices, displays and other peripherals.
Recent developments have extended Fibre Channel to Ethernet. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a protocol that leverages Ethernet extensions that enable the establishment of lossless connections between two Ethernet nodes. The FCoE protocol uses such lossless connections. More specifically, native FC frames are encapsulated in Ethernet frames such that Ethernet becomes the physical interface and FC becomes the transport protocol. At an Ethernet receiving node, the native FC frames are de-encapsulated from the Ethernet frames and then processed in accordance with the FC protocol. By deploying the lossless capability in Ethernet, FC can be extended to Ethernet-capable network devices, thereby increasing the reach of FC connected devices. One of the components that enables FCoE is known as an FCoE Forwarder (FCF). An FCF is a component that forwards FCoE frames in accordance with the FC rules. An FCF is functionally equivalent to a native Fibre Channel switch. An FCF may support both Ethernet interfaces and native Fibre Channel interfaces.